Q: When is the sexual abuse of children culturally, socially and politically acceptable?

A: When it's committed with industrial efficiency by organised gangs of mainly Pakistani men in English Northern towns like Burnley, Oldham and Rotherham, of course.

But obviously you're not allowed to admit this or you might sound racist. That's why, for example, in today's BBC report into the fact that at least 1400 children were subjected to "appalling" sexual abuse in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013, you have to wade 20 paragraphs in before finally you discover the ethnic identity of the perpetrators.

And even then, the embarrassing fact slips out only with the most blushing mealy-mouthedness:
By far the majority of perpetrators of abuse were described as "Asian" by victims.

PUBLIC ADVOCATE NOTE FOR AMERICAN READERS: "PAKISTANI MEN ARE NOT "ASIANS" " (with apologies to "Asian" and most "Pakistani" nationals in advance).

(British)Telegraph Headline:

Rotherham child sexual exploitation: Victims raped, beaten and doused in petrol if they threatened to tell Report reveals how victims were ritually abused by gangs of Asian men before being ignored by the police and social services

When in 2010 five Asian men from Rotherham were jailed for grooming teenage girls for sex, it was regarded as a feather in the cap for South Yorkshire Police and the local social services which had doggedly pursued the prosecution.

Sentencing Adil Hussain, Razwan Razaq, Mohsin Khan, Umar Razaq, and Zafran Ramzan, the judge described them as "dangerous sexual predators" and said Rotherham would be a safer place for youngsters with them off the streets.

But Tuesday's damning report into sexual exploitation in the South Yorkshire town revealed in stark and horrifying detail how their appalling crimes were merely the tip of the iceberg.
For at least 16-years gangs of mainly Asian men were able to target, groom and abuse girls as young as 11, with little to fear from the authorities.

In her 153 page report, Professor Alexis Jay, the former chief inspector of social work in Scotland, catalogued a series of appalling incidents in which children were gang raped, beaten, threated and then dismissed and ignored by those who ought to have been protecting them.......